You Woke Up After A Regrettable One-Night Stand – Now What?

Waking up gasping for water like SpongeBob in Sandy’s Treedome in a feeble attempt to cure your crippling hangover is an all too familiar weekend sensation. Depending on your level of self-respect, critical decision-making skills, and current relationship status, this might be the only hurdle to cross before you pop an ulcer-inducing amount of ibuprofen and start watching Season Four of The Office for the third Saturday in a row. However, if you’re anything like the rest of us, you’ll quickly realize that hydration is the least of your worries.

Rolling over into your post-wake stretch, only to find a girl whose name you can’t remember – actually, did you ever learn it anyway? – starfished over your bed, having claimed your sheets in the middle of the night like Christopher Columbus landing in the Bahamas is certainly going to put an extra wrinkle in your morning. Assuming you remember anything about last night, you’ll admit you might have lowered your standards a bit, at the time. Now you’re ashamed to realize that severe beer goggles and testosterone struck again, and your only recourse is to contemplate contacting your accountant to write this off as a charitable donation.

As an overwhelming sense of regret forces you to contemplate every life decision you’ve ever made, she’ll finally wake up and smile, hoping to rekindle the ill-conceived romance of the prior evening. It’s times like this you wish you exhibited more sociopathic tendencies, but you know you can’t just kick this girl to the curb in good conscious without a reason. Unfortunately, ghosting doesn’t work when you’re in this deep and you’re gonna have to get creative. You excuse yourself to the bathroom, secretly checking that your roommates (aka: witnesses) are still asleep before you conjure up a plan to escort this girl out of your zip code.

Now you’ll be coming back in your room with the best fake smile you can summon, explaining to her how your parents are coming to visit this weekend and you’ve got to make your place presentable. “Sorry, I just can’t do breakfast, but maybe we can hang out tonight!” The word “maybe” of course being the operative word here meaning “no fucking chance.”

If she hasn’t already followed you on every social media platform this side of MySpace, consider offering her an olive branch that is your phone number. She’ll be falsely reassured that this wasn’t a one-time thing, and then you slowly drop hints throughout the weekend that you’re still not over your ex and you just can’t commit to anything serious right now.

As a side note: You might be thinking you got off the hook if this girl doesn’t text you later. Don’t feel too good there, champ. You’re her mistake.

The next step is damage control. Surely, you didn’t handle this situation with the finesse of Dexter dumping a body into the harbor, and somebody knows something. If that’s the case, it’s best to get out in front of it. Start brainstorming some excuses now. “you know, she just had a great personality.” “I was hammered, man. I don’t know.” Or, “she just really fucking wanted it, and who was I to take it away from her?” should get you started. You’ll still get some shit about it, but just remind your friends of their questionable decisions and they’ll shut right up.

Just remember, do not – DO NOT – give up her name. Facebook is your enemy here and any hard evidence can and will be used relentlessly against you. The best way to minimize the guilty PTSD flashbacks is to erase as many triggers from your environment as possible. Just hope this girl isn’t sitting in your Econ 200 class come Monday.

Finally, remember to take a shower and change your sheets like a gentleman – you’ve got that Tinder date coming over later..

It seems counterintuitive but if you keep some cheap but not completely shitty prepackaged breakfast and a microwave around you can make one for her and this allows you to use the excuse “I’m hoping she’ll pass on the word to her hot friends.” Also if it turns out she actually does have hot friends it pays off twofold. Granted this does come with the added risk that she might accidentally get the wrong idea but if you can walk that line it can work.